Bill Clinton: Obama Should Have Armed Syrian Rebels Years Ago

On Sunday, former President Bill Clinton made efforts to further distance Hillary Clinton from President Barack Obama’s unpopular foreign policy by stating that the Obama administration should have armed Syrian rebels years ago, a position Hillary Clinton claims she took at the time.

“I agree with her [Hillary Clinton] and I would have taken the chance,” said Clinton.

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Clinton said he was unsure what the outcome of such actions would have been but said, “I would risk it.”

The former president noted that despite Hillary’s urging, she was unsuccessful in convincing the Obama administration to take action.

“However, it was a–an argument she lost within the administration and she admitted then and acknowledged in her book that she can’t know that if her recommendation had been followed, it would have worked. That’s one of those things you can’t know,” said Clinton. “That’s why all of these decisions are hard.”

Hillary Clinton told the Atlantic that, “The failure to help build up a credible fighting force of the people who were the originators of the protest against Assad–there were Islamists, there were secularists, there was everything in the middle–the failure to do that left a big vacuum, which the jihadists have now filled.”

However, in a 2012 CBS interview, Hillary Clinton said arming Syrian rebels was not “viable” and suggested that doing so could be akin to arming the al-Qaeda terrorist group.